Radar will remain a key technology in the automotive space, but camera sensors and machine vision technology are poised to push advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) into the mainstream due to low cost, flexibility and multiple use cases, said ABI Research. Automotive camera sensor shipments are forecast to reach 197 million by 2020 from suppliers including OmniVision, ON Semiconductor, Sony, STMicroelectronics and Toshiba, it said. ABI described a “fusion of sensors” combining with radar for forward-looking obstacle detection, pedestrian detection, lane guidance and driver monitoring; with infrared cameras for night vision; and with ultrasonic sensors for automated parking. Advances in RF transceivers, microcontrollers and open platforms will lead to cost reduction by leveraging microcontrollers across multiple sensors, it said. The primary driver for the uptake of ADAS will be the arrival of autonomous driving, ABI said. ADAS is already becoming the subject of regulation, with the European New Car Assessment Programme including the presence of speed assistance systems, autonomous emergency braking and lane departure warning/lane keep assist as criteria to determine safety ratings, it said. In the U.S., similar initiatives are being discussed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which recently proposed changes to its five-star safety program, ABI said.

The FCC Wireless and Wireline bureaus gave limited, interim relief to Alaska telco Adak Eagle Enterprises and its Windy City Cellular subsidiary Thursday. An order said Adak will receive $33,276 monthly and Windy City will receive $40,104 monthly. That funding will last no more than six months or until the commission reviews the companies’ petition for reconsideration (http://bit.ly/1tpZLfD). Adak and Windy City had petitioned the FCC for reconsideration of its denial of the companies’ request for a waiver of caps on USF payments (CD Aug 16/13 p5). Executives from Adak and Windy City urged FCC staff in a meeting last month to provide a “permanent solution” the funding issues they have sought to relieve through the waiver (CD July 29 p14).

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating the Patent and Trademark Office based on a Washington Post article (http://wapo.st/1oVE7Po) alleging USPTO remote employees lied about their hours, said a letter from committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/1thQ4Rl). “Reportedly, patent officers and paralegals routinely lied about their work and logged thousands of hours on the taxpayer’s dime,” said a committee news release Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/VEMa8e). “Raising questions about USPTO’s internal investigation, the USPTO also removed the most damaging reports of employee fraud in a report to the agency’s independent watchdog.” Issa asked Pritzker to arrange a briefing by Friday for the committee’s staff. “We are carefully reviewing the Committee’s request and will respond and remain in close contact with the Committee on this matter,” the USPTO said in a statement Wednesday. The office “welcomes this opportunity to demonstrate that the agency’s award-winning telework programs -- and their measurable work production requirements for patent examiners -- have been integral to the USPTO’s dramatic, quantifiable progress in fulfilling its core functions of reducing the backlog of patent applications and the wait time for applicants,” it said.

Applications for rural broadband experiment funding are due Oct. 14, the FCC Wireline Bureau said in a public notice Tuesday (http://fcc.us/1ti1vs9). The FCC is awarding up to $100 million in rural broadband experiment support (CD July 14 p11) to bring next generation voice and broadband service to high-cost areas of the country, the notice said. The budget calls for $75 million for projects in high-cost areas proposing to offer broadband service at 25 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream; $15 million for projects in high-cost areas proposing to offer broadband service of 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream; and $10 million for projects proposing to serve extremely high-cost areas with broadband service of 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream, the notice said.

The special access data collection effort announced by the FCC (CD Aug 19 p2) Monday could pose “longer-term concern for incumbent telcos,” said Paul Gallant, analyst at Guggenheim Partners, Wednesday in a research note. Noting the issue “has gone on for years,” Gallant wrote, “there is no assurance that it will actually result in rule changes. But should the FCC decide the data show incumbent pricing power and insufficient competition in certain areas, we do expect the agency to push forward with changes that could limit telcos’ special access prices in some way.” A final ruling is a ways off and “seems unlikely” before the first quarter of 2016, he said. Gallant said the FCC and congressional Democrats have long backed a special access inquiry, so Chairman Tom Wheeler will likely “closely evaluate whether to propose revised special access pricing rules for incumbent telcos.” What ultimately happens, he said, will depend on what the data show. If the findings are “inconclusive or not persuasive, the agency might decide that opening up a new policy battle with AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink and others doesn’t pass the cost-benefit test,” Gallant wrote.

One in four U.S. broadband homes with smart home devices experiences problems on a monthly basis, said research from Parks Associates, which plans a webcast Wednesday at 2 p.m. EDT to address service and support issues with smart devices in connected homes. “Internet of Things: Impact on Support Services & Solutions” is being held jointly with Support.com. “The dramatic shift in technology driven by the cloud and the Internet of Things increases product and call complexity,” said Amy Millard, Support.com vice president-marketing, in a Parks news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1rO08Pe). Technology providers have to “continuously optimize their service interactions,” Millard said, saying automating agent processes “is a key step” toward optimization.

While no final decisions likely have been made, the FCC appears unlikely to reclassify broadband as a Title II service, Paul Gallant, analyst at Guggenheim Partners, said Friday in a research note. “We don’t believe any final decisions have been made, but we continue to believe the most likely outcome is for the FCC to keep broadband classified under Title 1 and adopt rules that clearly restrict paid prioritization.” That would likely be the preference of Chairman Tom Wheeler, and few big Internet companies are pressing for reclassification, he wrote. Meanwhile, MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte said in a video blog post he questions whether net neutrality rules make sense (http://bit.ly/1sJQZeH). All bits are not equal, he said. “People don’t appreciate that a book, a normal novel, is about a megabyte,” he said. “And yet a second of video is more than a megabyte. So when you look at video for a couple of hours it’s the equivalent of hundreds of books.”

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative seeks comment on Chinese compliance with World Trade Organization commitments, and will convene an Oct. 1 public hearing on the matter. Comments and testimony will be used to compile an annual USTR report on Chinese WTO compliance. The U.S. has claimed victory in a number of recent disputes with China, including the early August WTO appellate body decision to affirm China violated trade rules through its export restraint regime on two rare earth metals. Comments should be submitted on www.regulations.gov under docket number USTR-2014-0015. Comments and requests to participate at the hearing are due Sept. 17, said a USTR notice appearing in Friday’s Federal Register (http://1.usa.gov/1nTxQz3).

The government’s email metadata surveillance program suffered from years of “systemic overcollection,” said a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) decision declassified Monday (http://bit.ly/1oYk1nF). The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified Monday a trove of FISC orders, judicial oversight documents and NSA inspector general audits after a White House review and Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Privacy and Information Center. In its blog post, ODNI said “this Internet communications metadata bulk collection program has been discontinued” since 2011 because of the concerns of both the FISC and NSA.

The government must declassify in full a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) decision on the government’s Patriot Act Section 215-authorized surveillance programs (http://1.usa.gov/1yekcfM), said a Thursday FISC ruling, released Friday in docket Misc. 13-02. The American Civil Liberties Union last summer filed motions to declassify the opinion, the ruling noted. The government has until Aug. 29 to release the Feb. 19, 2013, opinion.